Personality Type- A Way to Understand Every Child

Nurture by Nature : Understand Your Child's Personality Type - And Become a Better Parent
by Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron-Tieger

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Sometimes, seeing our children in a fresh, new way is the first step to changing old and ineffective ways of relating to them. Personality Type is a powerful and respected method of identifying and understanding a person's true, inherent nature. Based on the work of Carl Jung and the American mother-daughter team of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, we can now identify sixteen distinctly different personality types into which we all fit. Children are born with a type and remain that type their entire lives; parents are the same type they were as children. Our personality type affects all aspects of our lives, from the way in which we play as toddlers to the subjects or activities in school that interest or bore us to the occupations we find satisfying as adults. Our natural type is reflected in the kind and amount of interaction with people we like, the kinds of information we notice and remember, the way we make decisions, and how much and what kind of structure and control we prefer. By understanding your type and the type of your child, you will be able to identify ways of adapting your parenting techniques to emphasize the positive and constructive aspects of your child's individual nature. Personality Type gives us a powerful and enlightening way of altering our parenting styles and methods to be more positive. The result is fewer struggles and happier, healthier children. Knowing your child's type offers a virtual road map to the parenting style to which the child will respond best. And once we know what our children need to really thrive, we can find ways of giving it to them.

How This Book Works and What It Does for You

Reading this book is going to be an interactive process. Clearly, it is not our job to prescribe the values you wish to model and teach your child. That is perhaps one of the most personal choices any parent makes. But we do have some exciting insights to offer about children like yours and about the parents who have raised them. In hundreds of in-depth interviews, parents have shared their experiences-the good and the difficult, the enlightening and the embarrassing-and we're excited about sharing them with you.

In Part 1 of Nurture by Nature, you will be introduced to the truly miraculous effect understanding Type can have on your effectiveness as parents and on your child's well-being. You'll learn the basic principles of Personality Type. You'll discover your own type and that of your child by reading engaging and recognizable descriptions of the sixteen personality types. Numerous examples, real-life case studies, and checklists of behaviors will help you identify your child's true type, and you will learn through the Verifying Type Profiles the inborn strengths and possible weaknesses of children and adults of each type.

After identifying your child's type, you will turn to Part 2 of Nurture by Nature and read the appropriate in-depth type chapter for your child. Each of the sixteen type chapters describes children of that type at three different stages of development: preschool, school age, and adolescence. Then, each chapter provides guidelines on how to adapt your natural style of parenting when communicating, supporting, motivating, and disciplining your child as you reinforce his or her innate personality. We will share with you the many practical suggestions we've gained from all our parenting workshops, seminars, and interviews, and working with Type on a daily basis for over fifteen years. Using an understanding of Personality Type, you'll be able to view your child's personality characteristics as assets, not liabilities. The tools and insights you gain will help you begin to anticipate, rather than just react in an emergency mode. And we will explain how to use your new knowledge of the Type differences between you and your child to navigate around common sources of conflict with less tension, stress, and guilt for both parent and child. Finally, we'll offer you an exciting peek into your child's future-a profile of the self-confident adult of your child's type. Each type chapter concludes with a special “Crystal Ball” section in which we describe the kind of happy, well-adjusted adult a child of each type can become. By reading what works with other children like your own, you will be reassured, energized, and armed with powerful and accurate new insights about your child, and the tools to help you implement them.

One important caveat. This book is written for parents of healthy children, those without serious learning disabilities, or physical, emotional, or mental-health challenges that require special attention and services. Just as one's genetics, life experiences, and culture overlie our type, so do those special needs and challenges. For practical reasons, those concerns are beyond the scope of this book.*

So Who Are We, Anyway? About the Authors

Nobody is really an expert at parenting. After all, every parent-child relationship is unique and complicated. But we do bring unique qualifications to the writing of Nurture by Nature. As co-authors of the successful Do What You Are, we introduced hundreds of thousands of career searchers to the benefits of understanding one's type in identifying and finding satisfying work. Having pioneered the application of Type in career development, we've gone on to apply our expertise in Personality Type to child rearing through our various workshops and seminars. Now we are ready to share our experiences and discoveries with you

We have established ourselves as experts in the study and application of Psychological Type with our professional training programs, presentations at national and international conferences, speaking engagements, and numerous radio and television appearances. We also, not incidentally, have two children, aged eleven and seven, and regularly experience firsthand the benefits of applying Type to parenting dilemmas.

If you are anything like us, you'll agree that parenting is the most challenging, complex, and sometimes intimidating responsibility you've ever taken on-and undoubtedly the most important. Using the anecdotes from our workshop experiences and interviews with parents and children that will resonate for all parents, we will show how so many of the common conflicts between parent and child are very frequently the result of a clash of different personality types. In reading this book, we believe, you will come to know your child in a deeper and clearer way. We believe you will learn that adapting even slightly to your child's personality type can help you better manage conflict and communicate a strong message of acceptance and unconditional love that will last a lifetime.

* Perhaps more than any other condition, we are aware of the struggle parents with children with ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) face. Throughout our research, we looked for connections between a child's type and that confounding condition. We found nothing conclusive about which types are most commonly afflicted, or what strategies might be most helpful for ADHD children of different types. What research we did find is listed in the Resources section at the back of this book. The Association for Psychological Type (also described there) is the organization we expect to be at the leading edge of research on this issue as it relates to Personality Type.

© 1997 by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger

About the Author

Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger have been married for many years, and are internationally recognized experts in the application of Personality Type. Their other books include the bestselling Do What You Are, Nurture by Nature, and, most recently, The Art of SpeedReading People. They live in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger have been married for many years, and are internationally recognized experts in the application of Personality Type. Their other books include the bestselling Do What You Are, Nurture by Nature, and, most recently, The Art of SpeedReading People. They live in West Hartford, Connecticut.